All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Ghost of Mind
Episode One
Copyright © 2013 Odette C. Bell
Author’s Note: I previously published this series under the pen name JC Luck. I am now republishing it under Odette C. Bell.
Cover art stock photos: Calligraphic design elements & page décor © S-e-r-g-o, Earth From Space © Dean Neitman, Woman’s face with black hood © OlivérSvéd. Licensed from Dreamstime.
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GHOST OF MIND
EPISODE ONE
Chapter 1
Alice pushed herself up from her cot. Her arms were tense, the skin along them warm with sweat. She hadn't slept well last night. Then again, when did Alice ever sleep well? She had a lot going on in her mind, a lot going on in her life.
She was the last of her kind, the last of her race. And what was worse, she was the last of the Old Ones.
And no, that did not mean that Alice was a geriatric. She was young for her species; it just so happened that her people were considering ancient. The ones that had come before. Those aliens that had been responsible for crafting the modern universe.
Alice stood up, taking a deep breath as she did.
Then she padded across the room, her bare feet soft against the cold floor. She headed towards the console in the corner. Letting out a heavy, rattling sigh, she pushed herself down onto the broken flight chair she had salvaged from one of the dumps outside.
Biting very hard into her bottom lip, she tried to muster up the confidence she would require to do what she needed to do next.
Check the news.
Alice pushed her fingernails into her hand as she tried to garner enough confidence and courage in order to bring her hand up and let the sensor in the console register her movements so she could command the holographic images.
For most ordinary people, checking the news would not be a big ordeal. For most ordinary people, they were not the last of their kind. They were also not on the run from a universe, that if it knew they existed, would be after them with every single ship and warrior and weapon they had.
That was Alice's life. That was the secret behind her desperation, her fear, the reason she was stuck in this tiny apartment, in his tiny room, on her tiny cot.
No friends, no family, no one to rely on. Just Alice. And one hell of a history chasing her down.
The galaxy had not always been this way, and neither had the universe. For billions upon billions of years everything had been separate. Every race and every cluster had been kept apart by the vasts of space, just the way nature intended it to be. Then the Old Ones had come along. They had not been one distinct race, but a group of many. They had seeded the universe with technology so powerful and incredible that it managed to connect even the furthest reaches of reality to one another.
But more than the technology and incredible devices they had created, it was the power source that had kept it all running that was truly remarkable.
Beyond words, beyond concepts even. Possibly the greatest invention in all of the history of the universe.
Alice's race had been behind that invention. It was her fingers as they scrolled up and down, the computer console picking up on the movements to move the holographic images displayed before her, that were the true key to modern civilization.
Power. Energy, beyond people's wildest dreams. Enough to enable the most fantastic of technologies, the most incredible of capabilities.
Sighing, Alice pressed her fingers further into her head. She'd learned that off the humans; apparently massaging your brow helped relieve tension.
It didn't work. If Alice wanted to release her tension, she would likely have to hop a transport and travel to a completely abandoned galaxy with no sign of any other race to bother her. Then and only then would she be able to relax. With no one around her, there would be no threat that someone could find out what she was, use her abilities to rekindle the Old Technology, and no doubt lay waste to the modern universe as it was known.
She wasn't going to get that opportunity.
Not now, not ever.
Winking one eye open very slowly, Alice looked at the holographic feed in front of her. As her hand moved slowly from left to right, thousands upon thousands of images flickered for just long enough for the human mind to pick them up. Alice was not human though, and her mind was capable of processing so much more. As the images flickered past, snippets of sound clips accompanied them. It was a heady, strange experience. And if it was not one Alice had lived thousands upon thousands of times, it would confuse the hell out of her.
A lot of modern society confused the hell out of her.
Alice's race may have been foundational in bringing the universe to the level of civilization it now had, but there was still a part of her that wanted a simpler, easy life, closer to nature and as far away from technology as she could get.
Again, despite how much she yearned for simplicity, she was never going to get it. The universe was connected now and drenched in technology, and unless a catastrophic event occurred, it would remain that way.
Bringing a hand out, clutching it onto the edge of the console, letting her fingers tense as they pressed right into the metal, Alice finally found it.
The exact news she was looking for.
News of the Rim.
The war. Or at least the impending one. The one that the Government weren't exactly comfortable with admitting to yet.
Her eyes darted quickly over the information that appeared on the screen. Processing the images and sound clips at a speed most races would consider incredible, Alice found out exactly what she needed to.
It relieved her, but only just.
Stretching back in her chair, taking an uncomfortable breath, Alice couldn't help but reflect on how very pitiful her life had become.
She was in a strange, horrible world of her own. Despite the fact she knew she could never let anybody else find out what she was, that did not mean Alice couldn't feel the guilt of doing nothing.
So much was going wrong in the universe these days, especially in the Milky Way. Alice's race had not only been technologically deft, but they were physically strong too, fantastically powerful by human standards. They had been a race of warriors, of peace keepers. But Alice could not run off to join the Union Forces; she would be found out. She could not run off to protect the colonies along the Rim; she would be found out. And if she was found out, something far, far worse would happen.
Forcing herself to stand up, Alice walked around the room several times, clutching her hands behind her back. She had once seen that exact move in a video from Old Earth. It had been a movie of some sort, some kind of fictional description of ancient Earth history. Anyway, the main character in it, a captain of some sort, would always walk around his troops with his hands held behind his back, his chest puffed out, his neck receded slightly. It gave him, apparently, according to humans at least, a measure of gravitas. Of controlled force.
Well Alice would really like some of that. For a creature that was incredibly powerful, that had the key to most of the Old Technology scattered around the universe, she often felt so small and insignificant that flecks of space dust would have better self-confidence.
‘Come on, you've got to get up, you got to go and get to work,’ she said through gritted teeth, staring down at the holographic newsfeed before her.
Again her eyes darted from left to right, processing the information at an astounding rate. As they did, her hands clutched tightly by her side, the fingernails
pressing further and further into her palms. An ordinary human might have bled by now, even one of the other softer races of aliens too. She was not going to bleed. It would take a hell of a lot more to try and cut through her skin. It would also take a hell of a lot more to damage her in any way.
Despite her incredible abilities though, Alice always lived life on a precipice. If someone found out what she was capable of . . . her life would end. All the energy she had left inside herself would be sucked out.
Closing her eyes, shaking her head, Alice stepped backwards several times. Then she keyed a number into the pad just by her door, and waited with her arms outstretched as clothes were knitted over her bare body.
Then, pushing her thick black and blue hair against the base of her neck, Alice told the door to open and she walked outside.